John -
> a private publisher is not satisfactory because it limits the availability of
> public documents to private hands.
I don't think this will ever top crime as the major concern of the
average American. There is, however, no doubt that there are publishers
that would like the government to collect this information for them and
present it to them in a marketable format.
> Why does a CD-ROM from West cost about the same as their hard copy product,
> prohibit me from using any search engine but West's and prohibit me from
> making a copy of the public domain part of the text?
I believe you can make a copy of the public domain part of the text as
long as you don't re-sell it. If that's wrong, could someone please
correct/clarify? I don't think West even objects if you make copies of the
editorial enhancement portion for your own use. It's the re-selling
part that usually gets them cranky. For obvious reasons.
> for cost. I don't expect the court to supply search tools. etc. etc. I don't
> expect any organization of the information other than chronologically .
No, But as I've mentioned before, there has to be a great deal of work
involved with compiling, collecting, editing, making uniform, etc. cases
from Federal Courts in all 50 states. Perhaps someone from West could
give us details on how the process works.
>But how did the subsidy to the rich publisher get into the picture?
Trust me, no private publisher is going to do the work of compiling editing,
etc. court cases if there is no profit to be made doing it.
> The "elaborate government database" would be this: the courts would be
> responsible for ensuring that their opinions are "done" when released. Copies
> of their opinions in electronic format, which currently are erased after
> delivery to the publishers, would be retained indefinitely. That's it.
Hey, it takes the Supreme Court 2 years to decide their decisions are
"done". I don't want to wait that long! If that's not the hold up, is
there anyone out there than can explain why it takes that long for the
Supreme Court to publish their final cases? It seems to me that's very
important to this discussion.
> Courts must dictate the citation system used by lawyers to courts. The
> purpose is communication and the ability to verify. If everyone used a
> different citation system, the purposes would be frustrated.
I guess I just don't get this. You may be right, there may be a problem
here, but I just can't quite figure out what it is. I'll try, I promise,
I'll try. :-)
Cindy Chick
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